"Dan Choi, a West Point graduate and officer in the Army National Guard who is fluent in Arabic and who returned recently from Iraq, received notice today that the military is about to fire him. Why? Because he came out of the closet as a gay man on national television."

Two possible conclusions:

1. Some people hate gays more than they love life itself. More, even, than they value the lives of their own children.

2. Torture isn't really about safety. It's about something else. Because surely if we're willing to torture to be safe, we could manage to rub shoulders with a gay or two, as well?

There has been a constant erosion of the Constitution in the name of public safety.

For example, the police preserve a crime scene to they can collect evidence for prosecution but they have no obligation to preserve the crime scene so the defense can collect evidence. You're presumed innocent but not really.

People joining the military right out of high school carry the high school attitude about homosexuals along with them into the military.

You would have to change attitudes while children are growing up and it is doubtful parents are going to go along with that.

Given the opportunity, prisoners have a few categories of people they kill to build their reputation.

That was an interesting point, Barry. I am going to have to jump in with Elise's comment and note how Ben Franklin hit the nail on the head.

In Denmark, gays also serve openly alongside non-gays in the military and in the police. We have given them absolutely equal rights and we were the first country on earth to grant them legal marriage. Gays are, mostly, respected and are, mostly, not discriminated against. Naturally there will always be some people out there with an axe to grind, but here they're few and far between. Thank god for diversity.

I would rather work with a gay man than, say, a recovering drug addict, alcoholic, ex-criminal, terrorist or any other category of man the US apparently put higher than those who are differently inclined sexually. Man, I don't get it, but can tell you I have many a gripe with the American mentality about sex...

Society is too open about what happens in the bedroom. They call it intimacy for a reason. Nobody needs to know what happens under our roof or behind closed doors. The immature population among the "minorities" just love to scream for the attention. It's embarrassing to the rest of us.

This is something in common with politicians. All the blustery grand standing is theater. ;)

A little self control would be refreshing. It would also solve most of the 'problems' experienced at work, in public, in relationships, etc., but that's not satisfying and we're all about what feels good.

No politician, anywhere, is worth our trust. All parties are corrupt and all participants in the political theater are just cheerleaders and popularity whores.

This is definitely where you see the insane consequences of unexamined ideologies, isn't it?

In a bizarre way, though, this appears consistent -- albeit whacked -- to me. First you have the mythologies of masculinity that infuse the military. Is it the film version of "Full Metal Jacket" that contains that scene in which the soldiers assemble their guns in a provocatively sexualized way?

Anyway, you have all of these phallocentric undercurrents in military culture, which are then connected to a strong masculinization of military power (I realize I'm eliding a slew of issues covered in great detail by literary and cultural theorists who have extensively analyzed the sexualization of of war and the military) and a need for extreme male bonding (even among the military women, or sometimes at their expense).

And that combination of sex and masculinity is expressed in an environment that's still like 80% male, which creates anxiety about the homosocial nature of military culture (i.e. what are the allowable uses of homoerotic bonding) becoming *homosexual* (egads!). Which results in an overt banishment of gay soldiers, because god forbid all that homosocial/homoerotic acculturation should be taken *literally*!

So while it's truly perverse, I think the continued marginalization and demonization of homosexuality in the military is part and parcel of the military's own use of sexualized and gendered bonding techniques, combined with the further connection of masculinity to strength, which then hits that whole 'fear of gayness when in the presence of terrorism' madness.

The Don't Ask Don't Tell policy came in under Clinton and now the great Barack has been in office that hasn't changed? What a surprise - just like another campaign promise that won't come to pass - just like closing Gitmo. Don't you all love change...

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Welcome

There are a lot of terrific blogs out there on the world of writing, but Heart of the Matter isn't one of them. HOTM primarily covers politics, language as it influences politics, and politics as an exercise in branding and marketing, with the occasional post on some miscellaneous subject that catches my attention.

HOTM has a comments section. Sounds simple enough, but as even a cursory glance at the comments of most political blogs will show, many people would benefit from some guidelines. Here are a few I hope will help.

1. The most important guideline when it comes to argument is the golden rule. If someone were addressing your point, what tone, what overall approach would you find persuasive and want her to use? Whatever that is, do it yourself. If you find this simple guideline difficult, I'll explain it slightly differently in #2.

2. Argue for persuasion, not masturbation. If you follow the golden rule above, it's because you're trying to persuade someone. If you instead choose sarcasm and other insults, you can't be trying to persuade (have you ever seen someone's opinion changed by an insult?). If you're not trying to persuade, what you're doing instead is stroking yourself. Now, stroking yourself is fine in private, but I think we can all agree it's a pretty pathetic to do so in public. So unless you like to come across as pathetic, argue to persuade.

3. Compared to the two above, this is just commentary, but: no one cares about your opinion (or mine, for that matter). It would be awesome to be so impressive that we could sway people to our way of thinking just by declaiming our thoughts, but probably most of us lack such gravitas. Luckily, there's something even better: evidence, logic, and argument. Think about it: when was the last time someone persuaded you of the rightness of his opinion just by declaring what it was? Probably it was the same time someone changed your mind with an insult, right? And like insults, naked declarations of opinion, because they can't persuade, are fundamentally masturbatory. And masturbation, again, is not a very polite thing to do on a blog.

Argue with others the way you'd like them to argue with you. Argue with intent to persuade. Argue with evidence and logic. That shouldn't be so hard, should it? Let's give it a try.